27 June 2013

Emily Badger presents a great perspective on how Yelp!'s incorporation of health inspection data in San Francisco could eventually lead to better municipal data across the country. Imagine what would happen if parcel ownership data got standardized and integrated into tools like Google Maps and SimCity.

26 June 2013

Want more proof of a geospatial shortage? Computerworld reports that the immigration service for New Zealand has decided to recognize spatial skills workers as a group so desirable that they have a much better chance at a worker or residence visa.

18 June 2013

I have to admit that I am pretty surprised to find how frequently this summer I am hearing about the FEMA flood maps from unexpected sources around our region. At strictly social events with non-designers and non-planners, it still comes up. To help with those coffee shop conversations, you may want to check out this FAQ on the flood maps that was published by the Star-Ledger.
For students in the regional design studios this fall, not only should you check out the FAQ, but you should be thinking about what it means for places like Tuckerton, Eaglesboro, Stafford, and Little Egg Harbor.
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If you are in Christiansted this week, make sure you catch this great talk by Alex Duro at 5 pm Thursday at the Danish Guinea West India Company Warehouse/Slave Market Building. Great talk, great island.

09 June 2013

As we prepare for a studio focused on Sandy recovery, it is interesting to follow the media coverage of the recovery. It usually seems like the stories mostly come from small beach towns or places where politicians have called press conferences ro places that have made an improvement in one specific area. So I have to commend the Star-Ledger for their Sandy Recovery Scorecard that looks at 5 different areas of recovery in 15 different municipalities.

06 June 2013

When you watch the movies, you would think that outer space is crowded with satellites for measuring land use and monitoring climate change (and chasing spies in exotic sportscars). In reality, we have a shortage of earth observation satellites and the situation is going to get worse before it gets better.

Yet the long-term forecast for US Earth observations remains grim. The
US government plans to launch just six satellites between 2014 and 2020,
including only two of the four missions that the NRC panels deemed the
most important. The other two — designed to measure long-term changes in
solar radiation, ice-sheet velocities and terrestrial biomass — have
been shelved indefinitely by the White House.

Today, the Obama Administration’s National Science and Technology Council released a National Strategy for Civil Earth Observations—a framework for increasing the efficiency and effectiveness of the Nation’s Earth-observation enterprise.

About the Author

An Associate Professor of Landscape Architecture in Rutgers’ School of Environmental and Biological Sciences. He also serves as Associate Director of the Grant F. Walton Center for Remote Sensing and Spatial Analysis and Undergradaute Program Director for Environmental Planning and Design. As a graduate of Kentucky (BSLA), LSU (MLA) and Wisconsin (PhD), he has a passion for the critical role of state universities as a source for world-class research and education based on inquiry arousal but is too busy keeping up this award-winning blog. Dr. Tulloch can be reached at dtulloch[at]crssa.rutgers.edu

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